Our Founder

“Dany Laferrière says about Fabienne Colas that it has taken her five years to do here (in Quebec) what it would sometimes take most Haitians 30 years to accomplish.”
Translation of a quote from La Presse, January 23, 2010.

Actress, director, producer, Fabienne Colas works tirelessly and passionately to support and promote independent cinema around the globe (particularly black cinema). This is one of the reasons she set up the Fabienne Colas Foundation and then created the Montreal International Black Film Festival – MIBFF (formerly the Montreal Haitian Film Festival), which has become not only Canada’s biggest balck film festival, but also a key player in cultural diversity in Quebec by promoting independent author’s films from here and abroad.

Considered by many as the most popular actress in Haitian cinema, Fabienne started out as a model, was crowned Miss Haiti in 2000 and has represented Haiti in numerous beauty contests around the world.

A woman of action with a creative spirit, Ms. Colas is a woman of many talents: she is the President and Founder of her self-titled foundation, of the Montreal International Black Film Festival, of the Haiti en Folie Festival in Montreal (Haiti on fire), the Toronto Black film Festival (TBFF), the Festival Fade to Black and of the Quebecois Film Festival in Haiti, and is also very active at the production company, Zaza Productions.

In 2003, she was awarded the Ticket d’Or (golden ticket) in Haiti for best actress for her role in the film Barikad (directed by Richard Sénécal) and was also nominated for this same role at the Haitian Entertainment Awards in Florida. She has acted on both the big and the small screens in a number of productions in Quebec, Canada (Watatatow, l’Auberge du chien Noir, Comment Conquérir l’Amérique en une nuit). Ms. Colas is a member of both the Union des Artistes (UDA) and the Alliance of Canadian Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) in Montreal. She has sat on a number of prestigious juries in the arts community in Quebec, including that of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Winner of the Black History Month Award in 2010, Fabienne is a charismatic leader with an unwavering persistence and perseverance who makes things happen. Once she gets started, nothing can stop her. Her primary mission is to continue to create platforms that show a diversity of voices, faces and points of view.

In 2008, she made her first film, Minuit, a narrative feature on voodoo in which she also played the leading role.

She obtained from the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) a licence for two new television stations, provisionally called Diversité TV and Bon Goût TV, with a view to promoting a better representation of cultural diversity on televisions in Quebec and Canada and providing a window to those who would, otherwise, never be seen or heard.

Fabienne has been part of many juris among which the Prix Gémeaux and Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (Quebec Council for the Arts). She currently sits as a board member on several organizations including the Society for the Celebrations of Montréal’s 375th Anniversary.